Why would Labour want Mr Livingstone back?
Your support helps us to tell the story
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.
The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.
Your support makes all the difference.On the face of it, Ken Livingstone and the Labour Party should take up the opposite positions to those which they have adopted. Labour should be trying to persuade Mr Livingstone to rejoin, while the London Mayor should be resisting.
In the short history of directly elected mayors in Britain, non-party individualists have tended to have the better of the official Labour Party candidate, from Mr Livingstone in London to the monkey in Hartlepool and Robocop in Middlesbrough.
It is worth observing again that proportional representation would have been a better solution to the problem of ossified one-party states in local government than Tony Blair's obsession with the idea of the dynamic leader.
So why should such an astute operator as Ken want the suffocating endorsement of the conventional Labour Party? It is because his mayoralty is in trouble and because, when he comes up for re-election in 2004, he will not be running as an outsider for a new post but as an incumbent with a disappointing record to defend. In such a situation, politics as usual will reassert itself. It would be an advantage for Mr Livingstone to have a party machine, even one as rickety as Labour's in London, behind him.
Equally, however, Labour is right to refuse Mr Livingstone's plea for readmission.The fuss about his conduct at a private party is irrelevant to his policies as mayor, although it subtracts a little from his reputation for straight talking, but he has not been a good mayor in his first two years.
He has wasted time fighting an unwinnable battle with central government over the financing of the Tube. He has wasted money on propaganda and cronies. He is bringing in a plan for congestion charging that is justly unpopular– and he seems to be trying to make it look better by changing the traffic-light timings this year. He has done some good things with the buses, on which more people, and more poor people, travel than the Underground. But he has failed, above all, to strengthen London's reputation as a world city.
For those failings, he does not deserve either to be adopted by Labour as its candidate or to be re-elected by the voters of the capital.
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
Comments